IN BRIEF

With all the mainstream media hoopla surrounding the G7 summit this past weekend in Quebec, Canada, one thing is clear: President Donald Trump, as always, dominated the narrative. And he proved once again that he relishes being the anti-establishment guy, this time sending the heads of Europe’s globalist leaders spinning. The G7 summit usually amounts to little more than a couple days of Western allies and Japan hobnobbing for photo ops while proposing various jointly agreed upon socioeconomic agendas and then jetting back home again. It’s more pageantry than policy. But this time Trump saw an opportunity to press his case that the U.S. has long been getting a raw deal from its closest allies when it comes to trade (not to mention NATO). He declared in advance, “Looking forward to straightening out unfair trade deals with the G7 countries.” But he offered the caveat, “If it doesn’t happen, we come out even better!”

Trump caught everyone off guard by throwing out an unexpected proposal — “unexpected” in light of his recent implementation of tariffs on steel and aluminum. Trump suggested, “No tariffs, no barriers — that’s the way it should be. And no subsides. I even said no tariffs.” He added, “Ultimately that’s what you want. You want tariff-free, no barriers, and you want no subsides because you have some countries subsidizing industries and that’s not fair. So, you go tariff free, you go barrier free, you go subsidy free.”

The G7 leaders were seemingly stunned, but it became increasingly obvious that this was not a direction they wished to go. Instead, Europe’s leaders saw the summit as an opportunity to hammer Trump’s trade policies. Trump was coming to their sandbox and they were there to scold him for failing to play by their elitist rules for their vision of globalism.

However, even after all the tension, it appeared that the G7 summit would produce a jointly agreed upon “communique” — essentially a commitment to fight for a “rules-based international trading system and [to] continue to fight protectionism.” Trump agreed to sign the communique as he quickly dashed off to the much more important summit in Singapore with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

All seemed well for a few hours … until Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s follow-up press conference. Trudeau referred to Trump’s tariffs as “insulting” and insisted that he would “move forward with retaliatory measures on July 1, applying equivalent tariffs to the ones that the Americans have unjustly applied to us.” Trump, on his way to Singapore, quickly announced that he was withdrawing his signature on the G7 communique: “Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!” This was followed up by a series of messages in which Trump focused on his primary theme of America not getting a fair shake. Trump wrote, “Fair Trade is now to be called Fool Trade if it is not Reciprocal,” later adding, “We’re like the piggy bank that everybody’s robbing, and that ends.”

Europe’s leaders have clearly become increasingly frustrated with Trump’s seemingly unpredictable behavior. He, on the other hand, appears to have accomplished exactly what he intended — exposing the unfavorable trade imbalance between the U.S. and G7 nations.

Billionaire George Soros, one of the chief archenemies of Liberty, has a complaint. “Everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong,” he said over the weekend. Why? Because people around the world are rising up to reject the leftist, socialist, globalist worldview that Soros has spent billions to push.

“Apparently,” he lamented of Donald Trump’s unexpected election win, “I was living in my own bubble.” Now he fears that Trump is “willing to destroy the world.”

As The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti put it, “Soros seems to believe that the rise of anti-establishment leaders like President Donald Trump and far-right politicians in Europe isn’t the result of widespread dissatisfaction with the results of lenient immigration policies or concerns for western civilization, but, instead, the result of Soros simply being ahead of his time, and far too forward-thinking for the rest of us rubes.”

Ironically, of course, it’s exactly Soros’s brand of arrogant thinking that led to Trump and other anti-establishment movements. Funny, people don’t always enjoy being told what to think and do.

FEATURED ANALYSIS

“We are no longer a pageant. Miss America will represent a new generation of female leaders focused on scholarship, social impact, talent and empowerment.” —Gretchen Carlson, the 1989 Miss America and chairwoman of the Miss America board of directors

Carlson made this declaration last week as the Miss America beauty pageant announced the unthinkable — the end of the bikini competition. (That’s a tad different than Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit issue ditching swimsuits altogether, somehow as a part of the #MeToo effort.) It’s all part of significant changes to the multimillion-dollar organization that is now touted, according to its website, as “the nation’s leading advocate for women’s education and the largest provider of scholarship assistance to young women in the United States.”

The Miss America pageant began in 1921 as a “bathers revue” hosted in New Jersey’s Atlantic City by The Businessmen’s League. It has evolved to its current structure that features preliminary competitions and a final apical event of interviews, talent, evening wear, onstage questions and swimsuit runway modeling. With the expansion of the awards process to include scholarship money, the pageant is clearly meant to be more than just a gawking session for guys. But the Miss America Organization (MAO), while now billed as a scholarship program, remains about one thing: M-O-N-E-Y.

The launch of the event in New Jersey was to expand the summer tourist season. Now, in the day of television, advertising and branding, it’s about getting well-placed ads in front of an audience tuned in to watch young, beautiful women.

Some kudos go to those within the MAO who have taken the beauty-only pageant to its current format, where all 50 contestants get at least $3,000 of scholarship award funding. The top 10 finalists receive $7,000, the first-runner up wins $25,000 and Miss America earns $50,000. At least these young women are getting some financial reward for their efforts.

But the MOA board’s decision to end the swimsuit component, weighted at 15% in the preliminary competitions and only 10% in the final scoring on the big night, has provided another opportunity to appreciate the differences between the genders in biology, in sexuality and in our culture.

The #MeToo folks demand that women be treated the same as guys — well, unless that means one might be offended by course talk, expected to meet the same requirements on a physical test (such as military fitness), or some other inconvenience that supposedly prevents an XX-chromosome person from the same desired social status as her knuckle-dragging, oppressive-gender counterpart. But there are no Mr. America events with guys strutting around in form-fitting underwear. You see, some types of equality just don’t occur in a society that objectifies women. Using females in advertising is critical in reaching men as consumers because it sells products and is profitable.

The differences between the two sexes — and yes, folks, there are only two real biological genders — is not only visually striking, hence the success of the entire notion of the pageant, but psychologically different. Conservative radio host Dennis Prager elaborated in one of his PragerU video presentations on the cultural inequities of women being used in advertising to lure male consumers. But his remarks are not just based on his opinion or any man’s admission that he likes to watch the swimsuit portion of the pageant.

Neuroscientific research has proven that men and women see things differently. And by “different” it’s significant that men are more sensitive to visual cues and stimulation. The brain has androgenic receptors, just as it has estrogenic receptors, throughout the cerebral cortex, particularly in the visual cortex responsible for processing images impacting a mature male. These are also responsible for the fact that at birth, males possess 25% more neurons during embryogenesis in their visual centers than females.

It might be helpful to observe the basic value of life and mutual respect. Both notions run counter to some who refuse to grasp basic dignity and the standards of right versus wrong. That’s because it’s easier to take the moral high ground within the debate of a beauty pageant while ignoring the entire industries of abortion and entertainment exploiting women.

The future of the Miss America program will be a function of ratings and the revenue of advertisers that drive viability and monetary health. And a lot of money will be made objectifying women to attract male eyeballs. Thus, if the cure for the epidemic of the objectification of women is the goal in our society — and it’s a worthy goal, given social ills that range from pornography to sex trafficking of young female children — it’s likely going to require more than ending the swimsuit competition at the Miss America pageant.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Charles Krauthammer: “I have been uncharacteristically silent these past 10 months. I had thought that silence would soon be coming to an end, but I’m afraid I must tell you now that fate has decided on a different course for me. In August of last year, I underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in my abdomen. That operation was thought to have been a success, but it caused a cascade of secondary complications — which I have been fighting in the hospital ever since. It was a long and hard fight with many setbacks, but I was steadily, if slowly, overcoming each obstacle along the way and gradually making my way back to health. However, recent tests have revealed that the cancer has returned. There was no sign of it as recently as a month ago, which means it is aggressive and spreading rapidly. My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live. This is the final verdict. My fight is over. I wish to thank my doctors and caregivers, whose efforts have been magnificent. My dear friends, who have given me a lifetime of memories and whose support has sustained me through these difficult months. And all of my partners at The Washington Post, Fox News, and Crown Publishing. Lastly, I thank my colleagues, my readers, and my viewers, who have made my career possible and given consequence to my life’s work. I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking. I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny. I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life — full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “There is no question that we have failed to live up to the dreams of the Founding Fathers many times and in many places. Sometimes we do better than others. But all in all, the one thing we must be on guard against is thinking that because of this, the system has failed. The system has not failed. Some human beings have failed the system.”

Food for thought: “We take a young man and kick his father out of his life, send him to school where he has mostly women teachers, barrage him with negative messages about masculinity, then turn him loose at college where we treat him like a guilty-until-proven-innocent rapist, and after all that, we blame ‘masculinity’ when he goes off the rails despite the fact that he spent a lifetime bathed in femininity. Unsurprisingly, the more women try to change masculinity, the more negative and toxic it actually becomes.” —John Hawkins

Braying jackass II: “I feel like the bottom has to fall out at some point, and by the way, I’m hoping for it. I think one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy. So please, bring on the recession. Sorry if that hurts people, but it’s either root for a recession or you lose your democracy.” —Bill Maher

“We all belong,” eh? “We are all sacred and we all belong. Let’s just bake a cake for everyone who wants a cake to be baked.” —Andrew Garfield

And last… “I have decided some changes need to be made to our Constitution. Like dusting it off and putting it back to use like it was intended.” —Ryan Fournier

Join our editors and staff in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families. We also humbly ask prayer for your Patriot team, that our mission would seed and encourage the spirit of Liberty in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis

Nate Jackson, Managing Editor
Mark Alexander, Publisher

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